September 2, 2010

... is a funny title for an article, written by the author of "Sex at Dawn," which book title he declines to put in italics or quotes in his article title. I thought it would be interesting to discuss sex at dawn, in the literal sense, but I find myself confronted with an author who's miffed at a blogger who's dissing his book:

Her comments begin strangely, with the admission that she's "in the middle" of the book. Note the urgency to condemn it publicly, even before reading the damned thing!

Oh, blah! I hate this criticism. McArdle is blogging, not doing the official book review for the Atlantic. A rule against criticizing books you haven't finished would overprotect authors, since you shouldn't finish a bad book, and it would also underprotect authors, since the critics wouldn't disclose that they hadn't read the whole thing.

But bloggers... bloggers can open a book to a random page, read one sentence, cogitate furiously, then open up their laptops — maybe right there at Borders, where they picked up the book they didn't buy — and tap out a free-association blog post saying anything that occurs to them and publish — using the WiFi they didn't pay for either. It's not the slightest bit strange. And it's not unfair either. It is what it is, and we know what it is. It's blogging.

And boy, does she lash out:

• "It reads like horsefeathers . . . like an undergraduate thesis,"
• "breathless rather than scientific"
• "cherry-picked evidence stretched far out of shape to support their theory,"
• "they don't even attempt to paper over the enormous holes in their theory."

Ouch! And that's just the first paragraph.

Eh! There are only 4 paragraphs. By the way, "their theory" — if I can trust McArdle — is that "people are naturally polyamorous." The dispute continues with McArdle and the author (Christopher Ryan) throwing shit at each other in a fight about whether people are like bonobos. I'm just saying "throwing shit at each other" because that's how bonobos fight, and people are like bonobos, right? Not right? Advantage McArdle!!!!!

Anyway, as you've probably figured out by now, the book is not about sex at dawn — the practice of having sex upon first awakening in the morning — but sex and evolution — "dawn" in the sense of "the dawn of man."

So where am I going with this? It's a blog post. I'm a blogger. I'll go where I want, which is where I always go when this subject comes up, and I don't feel safe in this conversation no more...

'll go where I want, which is where I always go when this subject comes up, and I don't feel safe in this conversation no more...

I believe it's spelled, "no mo'". Wakeup sex is infinitely more gratifying if you can slide back to sleep afterward. If you have to get up for work afterward, it's more like a marathon jogger grabbing a quick drink from an outstretched hand.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

"Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is Perth Pink. This is a bottle with a message in it, and the message is 'beware'. This is not a wine for drinking, this is a wine for laying down and avoiding."

To actually focus on the book: "Sex at Dawn" is one of those evolutionary psychology books that tries to demonstrate that every human behavior the author feels strongly about is caused by biological evolution.

It's mostly an exercise in cherry-picking (no pun intended)

In McArdle's comments, someone makes the point that using bonobos as a model for humans doesn't really work. Bonobos and chimps are more closely related to each other than either is to humans. However, bonobos and chimps are very different.

If bonobos and chimps can't be used to predict each other's behavior, why should they be used to predict human behavior?

"Wakeup sex is infinitely more gratifying if you can slide back to sleep afterward. If you have to get up for work afterward, it's more like a marathon jogger grabbing a quick drink from an outstretched hand."

Personally I like to skip that track entirely. The next song on CD1-- the title track Quadrophenia-- is better, but CD2 is really where it starts rolling:

Why should I care? Why should I care? Girls of 15, sexually knowing...

Pretty soon I'm out of my brain on the train and all is good with the world. Usually this involves some sort of cannabis but it is not essential.

The Rock is sublime. The emotional storm is brewing. Can a bonobo feel this? You don't see bonobos playing the Super Bowl forty years later, do you?

By the time you finish off with Love, Reign O'er Me, you realize that loving monogamy (no matter how temporary or serial) is a better choice than fucking every possible chic:

Only love can make it rain...

How you live your life is a CHOICE. Who the fuck cares about what bonobos do when we individually decide our own fates? Bonobos don't rock like this. Stop arguing about monkeys, people! Listen to the music instead:

"To actually focus on the book: 'Sex at Dawn' is one of those evolutionary psychology books that tries to demonstrate that every human behavior the author feels strongly about is caused by biological evolution."

And how else might human behavior be explained? We are nothing but the result of biological evolution.

As for the human/bonobo comparison, humans are basically just monkeys in spacesuits, flinging shit back and forth at each other, fighting over turf, status and grubs.

But bloggers... bloggers can open a book to a random page, read one sentence, cogitate furiously, then open up their laptops — maybe right there at Borders, where they picked up the book they didn't buy — and tap out a free-association blog post saying anything that occurs to them and publish — using the WiFi they didn't pay for either. It's not the slightest bit strange. And it's not unfair either. It is what it is, and we know what it is. It's blogging.

"But bloggers... bloggers can open a book to a random page, read one sentence, cogitate furiously, then open up their laptops — maybe right there at Borders, where they picked up the book they didn't buy — and tap out a free-association blog post saying anything that occurs to them and publish — using the WiFi they didn't pay for either. It's not the slightest bit strange. And it's not unfair either. It is what it is, and we know what it is. It's blogging.

Boys wantSex in the morningSex in the morningWhen I'm not my bestBoys wantSex in the morningSex in the morningTearing at my breastBoys wantSomeone who's winsomeSomeone to pinSomeone to undertakeBoys wantSomeone to fall onSomeone to crawl onSomeone half awake

Boys wantSex in the morningSex in the morningCovers at my kneesBoys wantRotten conditionsPassive positionsI am a trapezeBoys wantSomeone who's sleepySomeone who's keepingNothing in too deepBoys wantSomebody first handSomeone to burstAnd then go back to sleep

There is nothing I like betterThan a jostle now and thenWith the hands under the sweaterAnd the back that starts to bendBut before my eyes are openI don't want to have to hideFrom a simpleton still pokingWith a thimbleful of pride

"How about culture? Or individual choices? We are not merely biological machines."

By and large, we are. Human behavior is remarkly consistent and similar over time and across cultures. One can read plays and novels written 150 or 2000 years ago and one knows the people depicted therein, and can recognize that they are among us today.

By and large, we are. Human behavior is remarkly consistent and similar over time and across cultures. One can read plays and novels written 150 or 2000 years ago and one knows the people depicted therein, and can recognize that they are among us today.

Yeah, I read your shit all the time and recognize that you are still a douchebag.

Follow Althouse' link and check the reader comments. Megan is just like Althouse in that she fails to toe the line and therefore she has, shall we say, something of an online following.

This author is responding like a 12 year old. The article is titled with McArdle's name so you know that's where he's going. It takes him 13 paragraphs of this sort of wind-up "But then you get someone who feels so personally threatened by the very idea that they don't give a damn about "your so-called evidence" (they assume you're making it all up anyway)." to even get around to mentioning McArdle.

In fact, though Megan clearly doesn't agree with his ideas, she was far gentler than he is. If anyone is sputtering, red-faced and has veins throbbing on their necks it is Ryan not McArdle. She at least goes straight to the book and criticizes it directly. He has to spend 2/3 of his response in character destruction by proxy before directly addressing what she posted.

And as Althouse says, while Megan may or may not know anything about the subject of his book he clearly knows nothing about blogging. He says "I'm not familiar with Ms. McArdle's work, but..." yet he has no problem calling her names for 13 graphs over a 4 graph blog entry. Childish much?

I'm happy you liked my comment at Ms. McArdle's blog. I did get a minor thing wrong in my comment there, based on double-checking an out-of-date source; bonobos are tool users. But bonobos and chimps are significantly divergent in their behavior.

By the way, there's a physiological factor against using bonobos-and-chimps even as a composite model. Detailed study of 33 primate species has demonstrated that species testis size relative to boy weight correlates to frequency of sexual activity (big testes are needed to produce enough sperm to keep up) and female promiscuity (because, when multiple males are competing to inseminate one egg, the ones that produce the most sperm have the best chance of winning).

Thus, chimpanzees and bonobos, where males have frequent opportunities to have sex and multiple males will have sex with the same female, have huge testes. Male gorillas, a species in which even the dominant male still only has sex a few times a year and where the females of his harem are usually faithful, have small testes.

And humans? We've got much, much smaller testes than chimpanzees/bonobos (both absolutely and relative to body size), though ones that are larger than gorillas' (also absolutely and relative to body size). You can model this as human males having lots of sex with monogamous females, moderate amounts of sex with females still substantially more faithful than chimpanzee females, or humans rarely having sex with females of chimpanzee-level promiscuity.

In short, male humans are not equipped by evolution to have sex like bonobo or chimpanzee males. We just don't have the balls.

Fair enough to play the "it's only a blog" card, but of course my response was posted on a blog as well, so I guess I should be able to spew whatever nonsense I want too, right? We who fling shit tend to get covered in the stuff ;)

I take that part back. I've now read through Megan's responses in her thread and she clearly does have a good bit of knowledge on the subject.

One funny thing about this is that after reading Megan's blog on the book I was inclined to buy a copy. I was thinking about it from a Catholic theological perspective. It (the book) is the sort of thing I get questions about during classes I help with every fall and I about half expect to hear questions about it.

After reading that post from the author, no thanks. If anyone asks about his book I'll just refer them to his post and ask if they want to read a whole book written by that person. I certainly don't.

Dr Bruce Sapolsky is a neurobiologist who studies stress, and spends his summers doing observations of animals on the African savannah.

He observed that baboons on a preserve are provided food and there are no predators (lions). The baboons only have to spend 3 hours a day getting enough calories and nutrients (far less than in the wild). So they have 9 hours a day free to....what?

Invent new ways to aggravate the hell out of each other with social aggression.

Like Ms MM, and unlike most of the commenters, I am half way through reading Sex at Dawn.However unlike her, I am hugely impressed.My perception is that this book is likely to be as important as The Female Eunuch was in the 1960s. Not immediately, but as the massively challenging set of messages it contains sink in to readers who can take the trouble to comprehend. Because the picture it paints of the world makes so much more sense than the logic which we receive from our politicians and schools and churches and the mass media.

Here's my response of a review of a critique of an author who is being critiqued by a journalist who the blogger of this website is supporting against the author whose main critique is that the journalist/blogger who criticized the book didn't finish reading the book.

I had trouble finishing to read your post, but keeping that in mind, if you are going to blog on a review of a review in which the reviewed condemns the reviewer for not finishing the reviewed content, you might want to actually help solve the issue by, maybe...., reading the book being reviewed. If ya don't, than you ain't doing anything. And I guess this is the problem with blogging. Too much shit. Not enough substance. So write to express yourself, and not just cause you want to be able to google yourself and find your name.